Business as usual.

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: Unusual events and measures in various cities - Off the Map - Column

So the landlord is trying to close down Dr. Kevorkian's clinic. Says he didn't know what it was going to be used for. Yeah, right. Like Jack Kevorkian is going to open the world's most unusual electrical-supplies shop. Turns out it's the kind of clinic where you don't see many cabs lingering outside. Doc's calling it an obitorium. Suicide parlor doesn't have the right marketing ring, I suppose. Love to see his Yellow Pages listing: CHECKING OUT? CHECK US OUT! Just think, if this idea takes off, knowing the American entrepreneurial spirit, independent franchises are going to blossom like mushroom spores after a spring rain in Iowa. Dew Drop Dead clinics will litter the Southern rural scence. Motel 86s and Do Yourself Inns on the edge of town. We could be on the verge of a whole new cottage industry, complete with infomercials starring Leslie Nielsen touting a home do-it-yourself kit, which may be redundant, since if you watch enough infomercials you run the risk of expiring from nausea.

* Mason City, Illinois, which is so truly all-American, small-town picturesque, Norman Rockwell would dismiss it as imperialist propaganda. Pollyanna would be on her knees retching in the gutter.

Can't drive fifty-five? Well, the good news, my bucko, is you don't have to anymore. Congress just passed a law letting individual states determine how fast you are allowed to careen your two-ton steel cocoon down the highway. It'd be easier to find real cartilage in Michael Jackson's nose than anyone doing fifty-five these days. Go ahead, try obeying the speed limit on a major interstate and you risk getting squashed like a small emerging Central American nation with rich oil deposits.

I bet Montana raises the limit to just under the speed of light. Right now, it's only a $5 fine for "fuel consumption" as long as you're less than twenty miles an hour over the limit--even though it costs the state of Montana fifteen bucks to process the ticket. They try every year to raise the price of the ticket to at least the cost of processing. But every year it gets voted down by the state legislature. The best way to handle the Montana highway patrol if they stop you is to tell the guy you're in a hurry to get to Idaho.

* New York City. They say the Devil made both Hell and New York City and he chooses to live in Hell. Who can blame him?

Clinton is trying to preempt next year's expected Republican onslaught with a $2.5 million series of ads depicting himself as Mr. Anti-Crime...